


The Snake Prince

by significantowl



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Community: summerpornathon, M/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:18:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Tell me the secret of my birth," Arthur says, standing on the bank while the moon rises and the water rushes.</i> [Folktale!AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Snake Prince

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the myth and legend challenge at summerpornathon; slightly edited from original posting.

"Tell me the secret of my birth," Arthur says, standing on the bank while the moon rises and the water rushes. The river speaks more than his father ever has, and truer, because water can never hold a lie; it moves as they say his mother once moved, quicksilver-bright, ever at home in the moonlight.

"Tell me the secret of my birth," he repeats. Two times asked, two chances to repent. The third will come with no such reprieve, and since Arthur needs none, he wastes no more time. He asks, and the water answers. His body changes.

Arthur slips into the river for the first time as himself: snake-man, serpent-prince, whole.

*

By day there are knights to oversee, council meetings to endure, and his father’s every wish to uphold.

By night, there is freedom.

*

A cottage lies upriver, small, ramshackle, but somehow all the more charming for it. Arthur enters it silently, his snake-body leaving long, winding tracks of river mud on the wooden floor. A man sleeps at the table, head dipped low over a book, the wild, dark mess of his hair perilously close to a candle flame. Arthur sighs and slithers up the table, snuffing the candle with a brief, painful flicker of his tongue. He watches the man for a time, the fascinating angles of his face in the moonlight, all lines and curves and deep, tempting shadows. 

Arthur flickers his tongue once more, touching it to a furrowed line between the man’s brows, then leaves as silently as he had come.

*

The man is asleep in bed the second evening, his shoulders and back bare to the room. Arthur rests his muddy head on the linens and considers the man’s smell, all sharp green herbs and skin-musk, alive in a way that nothing is within the stone walls of the castle. 

This man is earth, where Arthur is water. That seems perfect; that seems right. 

This man lives by day, where Arthur is only truly alive at night. That is wrong.

*

Arthur enters the house a third night, knowing as he does that the action is a seal, a binding.

The scene has changed. 

The man is awake, sitting calmly on the bed, bare feet on the floor. There are four bowls on the floor in the corners of the room; two of sugar, two of milk. The room writhes with snakes.

The man is either very brave, or very stupid. Arthur says this aloud, with no thought that his sibilance will be understood. But the man grins at him, wide and open, and says, "I'll take the former, thanks." He walks to the door, ankles brushing against twisting, muscular bodies without a care, and says, "The prince has arrived; it is time for you to leave."

And they do, to the last.

"My name is Merlin, and three things I have to offer you by night," the man says. "Food, should you need to eat. Conversation, should you care to talk. A door, should you wish to leave."

Merlin's bottom lip looks sweeter to taste than any sugar or milk, and the door, open now to the night, has a latch that Arthur could work with his hand by day. As does every door in his father's castle, should a prince be ready to stand against his king's wrath on the other side.

Arthur imagines the sun on Merlin's skin, and thinks, perhaps, that he is.

Arthur coils around himself slowly, comfortably. "How is it you understand me, and command my kin?"

"Oh," Merlin says. "There is a secret to every birth."

*

By the early rays of morning light, Arthur takes his first taste of Merlin’s lips, rolling their bodies flush together. He licks, then bites down softly; when Merlin says, “Toothy when you’re like this too, aren’t you?” Arthur nips harder, pulling Merlin’s lip between his own.

This time, Merlin can only groan. Arthur finds he likes it.

Arthur wants to savour every bit of Merlin, so he does, mouthing his way down Merlin’s body, skin flushing warm under his tongue, scent heady to his nose. Reaching Merlin’s cock causes his own to swell, and he rubs Merlin’s tip with his lips, then flicks it delicately with his tongue, over and over until Merlin buries his hands in Arthur’s hair.

The first time Arthur comes, it’s with his cock grinding against the bed while he takes Merlin in his mouth as deeply as he can. The second time it’s with his hand around he and Merlin both, pulling and pulling, as he bites down on Merlin’s shoulder hard enough to raise a bruise. 

He comes a third time in Merlin's arms, in Merlin's bed, and that is how it will be ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [The Snake Prince](http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/144/the-olive-fairy-book/5147/the-snake-prince/), a tale from India, as collected in Andrew Lang’s _The Olive Fairy Book_.


End file.
